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National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
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2 I 2
MARCO POLO BOOK I.
NOTE 3.—Pauthier's text has " sont si honni de leur nzoliers comme vous avez ouy." Here the Crusca has " sono bozzi delle loro moglie," and the Lat. Geog. " szint bezzi de suis uxoribus." The Crusca Vocab. has inserted bozzo with the meaning we have given, on the strength of this passage. It occurs also in Dante (Paradiso, XIX. 137), in the general sense of disgraced.
The shameful custom here spoken of is ascribed by Polo also to a province of Eastern Tibet, and by popular report in modern times to the Hazaras of the Hindu-Kush, a people of Mongolian blood, as well as to certain nomad tribes of Persia, to say nothing of the like accusation against our own ancestors which has been drawn from Laonicus Chalcondylas. The old Arab traveller Ibn Muhalhal (loth century) also relates the same of the Iiazlakh (probably Kharlikli) Turks : " Ducis alicujus uxor vel filia vel soror, quum mercatorum agmen in terram venit, eos adit, eorumque lustrat faciein. Quorum siquis earum afficit admiratione hune domum suam ducit, eumque apud se hospitio excipit, eique benigne facit. Atque marito suo et filio fratrique rerum necessariarum curam demandat ; neque dum hospes apud earn habitat, nisi necessarium est, maritus eam adit." A like custom prevails among the Chukchis and Koryaks in the vicinity of Kamtchatka. (Elphinstone's Caubul; Wood, p. 201 ; Burnes, who discredits, II. 153, III. 195 ; Laon. Chalcond. 165o, pp. 48-49 ; Kurd de Schloezer, p. 13 ; Erman, II. 53o.)
E" It is remarkable that the Chinese author, Hung Hao, who lived a century before M. Polo, makes mention in his memoirs nearly in the same words of this custom of the Uighítrs, with whom he became acquainted during his captivity in the kingdom of the Kin. According to the chronicle of the Tangut kingdom of Si-hia, Hami was the nursery of Buddhism in Si-hia, and provided this kingdom with Buddhist books and monks." (Palladius, 1. c. p. 6.,)—H. C.]
NOTE 4.—So the Jewish rabble to Jeremiah : " Since we left off to burn incense to the Queen of I-leaven, and to pour out drink-offerings to her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by famine." (Jerenz. xliv. 18.)
CHAPTER XLII.
OF THE PROVINCE OF CHINGINTALAS.
CIIINGINTALAS is also a province at the verge of the
Desert, and lying between north-west and north. It has
an extent of sixteen days' journey, and belongs to the
Great Kaan, and contains numerous towns and villages.
There are three different races of people in it Idolaters,
Saracens, and some Nestorian Christians.' At the
northern extremity of this province there is a mountain
in which are excellent veins of steel and ondanique.2
And you must know that in the same mountain there is
a vein of the substance from which Salamander is made,'
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